Last week, there was a teaser for a new Marvel NOW! series that simply stated ‘Survive.’ We were pretty clueless, though we hoped it was for an ongoing Marvel Zombies series without holding our breath. It has now been revealed by Marvel as a brand new series titled Avengers Arena…

This December, writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Kev Walker usher Marvel’s youngest heroes under the school bus and into AVENGERS ARENA. Maniacal master of ceremonies Arcade has booked one-way passes for 16 young heroes to an island known as Murder World. There’s only one item on the itinerary for this nightmarish getaway: Kill or be killed.

Some of the characters included in the series will be: Hazmat, Mettle, Reptil, Juston and his Sentinel, and X-23 from Avenger’s Academy, Darkhawk, Cammi, and the Runaway’s Chase and Nico.

Marvel has posted a Q&A with writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Kev Walker. When asked about the sizable cast of the new comic and what the focus will be, Hopeless responded: “It’s sort of ridiculous how huge our cast is at the start. But if you’re going to kill a lot of characters you gotta have a lot of characters.

There are 17 in issue one. 16 kids and Arcade. That’s quite a bit bigger than even most team books and it does make the writing a little more challenging. There’s just no way to keep everyone on the board all the time. So, yeah, we shift the focus from issue to issue. We may have two issues dedicated to the Braddock Academy and then let them recede into the background for a while so we can hang out with the Runaways.”